Last Vamp Standing (32 page)
Read Last Vamp Standing Online
Authors: Kristin Miller
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“Therians Declare War on ‘Blood-Sucking Creatures.’ Vampires Revolt, Fighting Back Against Natural Urges. Conflict Comes to a Head Beneath Golden Gate Bridge. Hundreds of Vampires Lost. City Mourns Dead.”
—
C
RIMSON
C
HRONICLE
A
RCHIVES:
H
EADLINES FOR
F
EBRUARY 1912
S
LADE DIDN’T THINK
twice about slamming the blonde against his closed apartment door. She gasped as her head snapped back, hitting the wood with a resounding thud.
“You son of a bitch,” she seethed, meeting his stare head on. “You think you can just push me around like I’m a fuckin’ doll?”
“Yeah, I do.” He pressed against her, the wide span of his chest dwarfing her petite frame. His mouth hovered so close to hers, he could taste the cranberry from the Cosmopolitan on her breath. “Tonight you’ll do what I want, when I want, how I want.”
Her chest heaved fuller now, her chocolate brown irises judging the strength of his words. There wasn’t a lick of fear in them. “Is that so?”
To answer her question he wedged his leg into the gap of her barely-there leather miniskirt, pinning her in place with his hips. He knew she felt the swell of his arousal when her eyes flared.
“And what if I just walk away, huh? Tell you I changed my mind and that I don’t want you, not one bit.”
“You’d be lying through that perfect mouth of yours.” He nipped at her lip.
The air hiccupped between them.
For a split second Slade thought perhaps he’d pushed too hard. Overstepped one of those fuzzy lines between sexy-possessive and dominating prick.
But then she whimpered, throwing her arms around him, crushing her mouth to his. Her tongue whipped and twisted like it was on some wild frenzy to explore the far recesses of his throat. She was good with her mouth. Expert even. He had to give her that much.
He could tell she could do other things with it, too, by the way she sucked and pulled on his bottom lip when he tried to pull away.
Despite her many soon-to-be-discovered talents, she was no match for Slade. Deep down she had to know it.
His hands took control, palming her breasts, gripping handfuls of her ass, sliding under her shirt and down the lip of her skirt. She was putty in his arms, mewing into his mouth like a newborn kitten with every stroke of his tongue against her lips.
Enough play time, Slade thought. Time to get down to business.
He needed inside.
Now.
Damn it, why hadn’t he left the door unlocked? It would’ve saved him the minutes detaching from this cougar to search for the key. His apartment was ritzy as hell; with twenty-four hour security, break-ins were non-existent. It wasn’t like anyone would be stopping by to check on him, either. In fact, the only people who even knew where his apartment was were the girls he picked up at Club Fever or the Velvet Room. By the way each of those one-nighters had ended, Slade seriously doubted any of those lucky ladies would ever be calling on him again.
As Slade pulled back, fumbling in his pockets for the key, she bit into his neck and grazed her teeth along his jaw.
Lightning rods shot to his lap. It was a reaction that threw him for a total fucking loop. When she nipped at him again, he lost it.
Fuck keys.
He roped her smooth legs around his waist while ravenously working her mouth, stepped back, and front-kicked the door open.
She laughed as he stormed inside, her platinum blonde wisps covering her face.
When he smashed her against the wall and hiked her skirt over her waist with a jerk, she smiled. “You’re going to have to buy a new door.”
He ripped open her see-through shirt right down the middle. Buttons scattered across the hardwood, rolling through the dark living room. “And you’re gonna have to buy a new shirt.”
As his gaze traveled to her breasts that were overflowing a lacy black bra, Slade thanked the Lord for doctors with abundant tastes. And for front clasps. He popped the tiny thing open with a quick snap of his fingers.
“Done this before, have you?” she said with a laugh.
“Guess you could say a time or two.”
Or a million,
he thought, but kept his mouth occupied by sucking one of her nipples into it.
Her fingers raked across his body, pulling and tugging his shirt over his shoulders, then his head.
“Are you pleased with me?” she breathed, her hands dipping and riding the grooves of his abs. “Or would you rather I shift into someone with larger breasts? Longer legs? Different hair? I would do that for you . . .”
“There’s no need to waste your shifts on my accord.” He certainly wouldn’t be returning the favor. There was no way to tell how many shifts therians had in the first place. Shifts were limited—numbered at birth and different for everyone. The idea that she’d waste a shift for a single screw and risk returning to weak mundane form again, made Slade wonder if the girl
wanted
to expend her shifts. Perhaps she wasn’t the only one being used tonight.
He grasped a handful of her slick mane and pulled back, revealing the span of her neck. He smudged a line of kisses from her collar to her ear. “And what the hell would make you ask to change your hair?”
“I was told you liked brunettes. At the club . . . they said you only . . . never mind.”
When he released her hair and looked her in the eyes, he realized she could’ve been anyone. It didn’t even matter.
Without word or warning, her hand slipped to his groin. After unzipping his jeans and making herself right at home in his boxers, she stroked his straining shaft. “Or if you want, we can play it real dirty . . .”
Electric currents shot up Slade’s spine.
Not wanting to hear another word about who or what she was going to offer up, Slade was on her in a flash, slinking one of her toned legs around his waist. He shot a hand to her center and was pleased beyond words to find she‘d left her panties at home . . . and was as bare as the day she was born.
Thank the Lord below, this would be a speedy trip down Meaningless Lane.
As his fingers went to work teasing her core, slipping in and out of her with quick, hammering strokes, his other hand pushed down his pants.
He poised his erection at her center, and then hesitated a moment on the brink of drowning in her warmth. Somehow he knew he wouldn’t be able to do these one-nighters much longer. They just didn’t feel the same anymore . . .
Throwing thoughts to the winter wind, Slade rammed into her in one hard stroke. Then pulled out and plunged into her again with enough force to shatter her completely.
She threw her head back in ecstasy, scrubbing her hands along his skull-trim cut.
He gripped handfuls of her ass, pulled her closer, pushed himself deeper inside. The more violently he drove himself, the more she cried out. He dug his fingers into her hips, kneading her flesh with raw hunger, guiding her swaying tempo until he felt the climax chill his core.
When the momentum picked up and all Slade could hear was the sound of their bodies slapping together and her hot breath tickling his ear, he groaned on the verge of release.
He met her eyes for a flicker of a second and saw that he wasn’t screwing the same woman.
She was now a petite redhead with a spike cut and bright green eyes. The sudden change made Slade lose his grip with reality. He’d never had a woman shift in the middle of sex before. Now, he supposed, he’d seen everything in this godforsaken world. It was a good thing therians had evolved from their werewolf cousins or he might’ve found himself face to face with a muzzle and an overbite instead of glossed lips and a teasing smile.
He slowed his pace and searched her glossy eyes for the woman who was there before. It’s not that he liked the blonde-betty better; he just felt cheated out of a ménage à trois.
“What are you doing?” she panted, scraping her hands along his abs. “Don’t stop.”
He pinched his eyes shut, concentrating on the pulsing of her core muscles instead of the shifting taking place around his cock.
As he pumped into her faster and faster, he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the woman bucking into a brunette, then a redhead, then back to a blonde. With each drive of his hips, she cried out in a different voice, from a different mouth. All the while wanting more. Needing more.
With a grit of his teeth and a final disoriented push, he . . . couldn’t do it.
Just. Couldn’t.
Well. Wasn’t this a damned first.
He needed some air to breathe without inhaling her sweet scent. That’s what it was, he decided. He needed some space where her soft skin wasn’t sliding along his.
Racing through his mind was the thought that
he
was the one who wanted and needed more.
So much more.
Through his haze, he heard the woman asking what was wrong. Felt her long fingers stroking his arms. Heard her breathing slow until her chest heaves were normal. When he opened his eyes, he was pleased to find the blonde-haired bikini model he’d picked up in the bar was back, shuffling her handkerchief of a skirt down her thighs.
“Look, I’m—”
“Well, can’t say that wasn’t fun to watch,” a deep voice grumbled from the hallway.
Slade spun around, yanking up his pants in a heart-flicker.
Standing in the doorway was a beast of a therian, his caramel skin aglow from the dim hall lights. “You Slade?”
“You a fucker who doesn’t know how to keep his eyes where they belong?” Slade went hand to handle, ready to slam the door on the bastard’s wide nose.
“I have a message for you. From Moses.” He took a giant step into the apartment.
Slade matched his step and went nose to nose. “If you take one more step into this apartment you’ll be delivering the message from your grave.”
“That so?” The messenger didn’t flinch a single tanned muscle. “Whenever you want to try to make that happen, I’d be more than happy to arrange the day. For now, Moses wants to see you. Seems vampires are uprising.”
Well, that was nothing new. Certainly nothing that would suddenly call Slade to Moses’s side. Vampires had been bucking against therians, fighting for the return of their blood rights, for hundreds of years. All that shit about being civilized and blending with society vanished with the drop of a fang on the streets. Vampires were leeches, sucking life out of the mundane race. Nothing more.
If it wasn’t for therians enforcing blood laws and protecting the mundanes who lived in Crimson Bay, blood would run like rivers down their streets. Mundanes would notice the disturbance in their blissfully ignorant lives. They’d discover something paranormal working and living among them. And they wouldn’t stop hunting, digging, and unearthing their society until they fleshed out everything not like
them
.
Therians would not take the fall for vampires’ sick urges. Not anymore. They would not stand idly by, watching vampires draw attention to themselves. Therians knew where that attention turned next—to other “unnatural” creatures roaming the streets. To shape-shifters.
It happened thousands of years ago in the dirty, plague-riddled alleys of Paris; therians were nearly wiped off the map. It wouldn’t happen again. It was a
Sheik’s
only duty—preserve the therian race, calling upon the shifters in his command to do whatever, whenever.
Which was why Slade hesitated, despite himself, at the mention of Moses’s name.
“I haven’t talked to Moses in almost a hundred years,” Slade said. “When I left, he wasn’t too keen on having me back. Tell him to fuck off.” He could find someone else to do his dirty work.
The therian smiled, wild and toothy, sizing Slade up. “Looks like you’re the one who needs to fuck off.”
In a flurry of movement, Slade gripped the messenger’s popped collar, spun him round, and pinned him against the wall. Before he dropped the fucker, Slade realized that his living room wall had seen more action in one night than his sniper rifle had seen in nearly a century
It was a damn shame.
“He’s still in Crimson Bay,” the shape-shifting therian grumbled. “Runs a club in the city called Mirage. You get your flickering ass down there
tonight
.”
Slade huffed into a mock laugh. “There’s no way I’m going back to Crimson Bay. You can tell him my answer is—”
“It’s an order, not a request. Not even
you
can disobey a direct order from your
Sheik
.”
Damn him for throwing that in his face. No one, not even a shape-shifting therian who hadn’t had a mission to assassinate a soul in a hundred years, could ignore an order from their highest in command.
Slade shoved the therian against the wall for good measure, then stood back and watched him leave. After the silence in the apartment became too thick for his own thoughts, Slade turned to the blonde and said, “Time for you to go.”
He took a twenty out of his back wallet for cab-fare and handed it to her.
She didn’t take the gesture, just walked out the door, her fuck-me pumps click-clacking over the tile floor all the way down the hall.
Standing in the middle of his empty apartment, an ache in his balls crying out for rough-handed justice, Slade thought his earlier assumption couldn’t have been more off-base. He hadn’t seen everything under the sun with a woman shifting forms on his Johnny. His boss was calling him back into action.
Hell had officially frozen over.
KRISTIN MILLER writes the dark and sexy Vampires of Crimson Bay series for Avon Impulse and fantasy paranormal romances for Harlequin. When she’s not plotting a way to kill her fictional darlings, she’s busy raising two children in Northern California with her devilishly sexy Alpha-male husband. Find out more about Kristin at her website, www.kristinmiller.net.
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